It was 100 years ago in May 1910 that Halley’s Comet crossed the world’s skies and scared the dickens out of people. Superstitious people thought it was an omen that war was imminent while others felt afraid of the gases in its long tail. In our sophisticated world where terrorists frighten us, could it happen again?

May 20, 1910, was the last day that all the leaders of Europe gathered in one place as they buried Edward VII, the King of England. It was a noticeable transition to new politics on the world stage. After that day historians believe World War One began.

It was also the day that the comet came to town. It had flown across Great Britain, in March of 1066, only five months before Harold II, the last Anglo-Saxon King of Great Britain died at the Battle of Hastings during the Norman Conquest. The siting of the comet was a harbinger of calm and relative peace in Europe. The Battle of Hastings took place on August 14, 1066.

Astronomers named this comet for Edmond Halley (1646-1742), an Oxford mathematician who observed that it came every seventy-six years on the anniversary of significant world events. It was especially mysterious to Christians who believed that it appeared as the Star of Bethlehem and guided the Wise Men to find the baby Jesus, their Messiah. The artist Giotto di Bondone observed Halley’s Comet in 1301 and depicted it as the Star of Bethlehem in the Nativity scene painted in the Arena Chapel in Italy. The comet’s appearances are recorded in ancient journals of Chinese, Japanese, Babylonian and Islamic astronomers.

In 1908, scientists at Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory were supposedly able to analyze the tail of Comet Morehouse using the new science of “spectroscopy and determine it was poisonous.” The appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1910 was frightening because Mother Earth going to pass through its tail filled with the same toxic, colorless cyanogen gas, similar to hydrogen cyanide. People began to panic. Even though it was traveling at 80,000 miles per hour and flying one or two light years from the sun, there was no Google or Wikipedia to check out how dangerous that really was. There was great speculation among the public and in the press. Entrepreneurs sold “Anti-Comet Pills” at one dollar a piece. They sold well! Others offered gas masks or “Comet Protecting Umbrellas.”

In an Associated Press story published on May 18th, children in Chicago asked for permission to stay home “for fear of some untoward happenings for which Halley’s Comet may be responsible.” Some farmers in Wisconsin removed lightning rods from their barns fearing they might attract the comet. Organizations in the United States printed leaflets with advice: “Warning to the Inhabitants of the City: “Close your windows and keep indoors for the Earth will soon pass through the tail of the terrible Comet and its poisonous gases will fill the heavens!”

A Bulletin published by St. Louis University in April, 1910 reported that “the total amount of matter in the tail is certainly exceedingly slight.” Other astronomers said the material in the tail was so spread out that there could be no ill effects. They assured everyone that our planet was safe and suggested the possibility of some spectacular sunsets. As Halley’s Comet traveled across the skies, no one was hurt by the poisonous cyanogen gas in the tail. The New York Times ran stories on the comet every day during the third week in May 1910. On May 20, after Earth had passed through the tail, people who had taken the pills were still alive…but, then, so was everyone else. On the 21st, the Times reported that “Calculations indicate tail may have passed Earth, missing it by 197,000 miles.”

Are we better off a hundred years later with so much information at our fingertips? iPhone applications would take us to the exact GPS location of Halley’s Comet every minute of its pass across the earth. Every move would be followed on Twitter.

My guess is that “Anti-Comet Pills” would still be best sellers. The market would be bigger on the Home Shopping Network or infomercials. Even with a money-back guarantee, it would be profitable at $19.95 (with non-refundable shipping and handling).

Some things change as the century passes but I believe that many of the evolutions in technology would make things stay the same.

David A. Becker (evadgorf@comcast.net) of Pueblo is a reviewer of religion books who runs an Internet bookstore. He is a member of the 2010 Colorado Voices panel.

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